bigglesfandomcom-20200215-history
Tony Luke
Tony Luke is the name of the R.A.F. pilot whose story is told in The Fortune of War. The story is set during the Battle of France and is related by Biggles to Wilks. Wilks had visited Biggles at 666 Sqn and had mentioned that a pilot of his, Tony Luke, showed much promise when he first met him in France. Yet now, months later, when he had been posted to Wilks' squadron, he appeared to have "a screw loose in his mental equipment." Biggles, it turned out, knew the background and told Wilks what had happened to Luke. It seemed that early in the war, Luke had attacked a Junkers Ju 88 over France and had succeeded in shooting it down. However Luke's own aircraft had been damaged by shrapnel from a French anti-aircraft gun. He crashed landed into the grounds of a French chateau where a French countess and her daughter and some of their servants pull him clear and called for the R.A.F. doctor. The doctor decided that Luke was too injured to move and asked if Luke could left at the chateau until he was better. The countess agreed and assigned her daughter Marie to look after Luke. Luke and Marie soon fell in love with each other. This, for Luke was a tragedy. There was a war on, and he was too young to be thinking about marriage. Marie came from one of the richest and oldest families in France and he was hardly in a financial position to ask for her hand. Nonetheless, although Luke was getting better, he pretended to be feeling worse than he actually was so that the R.A.F. M.O. would leave him at the chateau. However, one night, Luke was overcome by remorse for the trick he was playing on the doctor and the countess. Deciding that he could no longer deceive his hostess, he got up, dressed, and left, after drafting a note thanking the Countess for her kindness. Some French soldiers found Luke on the road and took him to a hospital. When Marie discovered that Luke had left, she set off in a car for the hospital to see him. However, along the way, her car was hit by a bomb dropped by a German bomber. Marie did not die immediately. She was taken to hospital where she managed to send a message to Luke through her doctor, telling hom she would be waiting for him "up there". The doctors at the hospital did not give Luke the message until he was discharged fit for duty. From then on, it seemed that everything changed for him. He probably blamed himself for Marie's death, and began to fly in a daredevil fashion, not caring if he lived or died. He piled up a score of 28 enemy kills in two months but always returned with an aircraft which had almost been shot to pieces. He had been wounded once again and had been sent to hospital. Discharged fit, he was posted to Wilks' squadron for the Battle of Britain. This was not the end of Luke's story. Wilks had an addendum. That very afternoon, he and Luke had met a flight of Messerschmitts. They had shot down three together but then Luke had been hit. He jumped from twenty thousand feet without a parachute. For months Luke had been flying like he had every intention of finding and joining Marie. Now, it seemed, he had found her. Luke's story is a very close parallel to that of Tony Harcourt in the short story Reunion. This story is very similar to The Fortune of War. One is a rework of the other but Reunion was intended for an adult audience. In the story of Tony Luke, Johns had removed some of the story elements present in the other story to make it more suitable for his young readers. Category:People Category:Biggles characters Category:WW2 era characters